


Recursive

by Pinkninja



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Booker is a mess and we love him so much, Booker | Sebastien le Livre-centric, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Humor, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani and Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Acting Like a Married Couple, Like a lot of temporary character death, M/M, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28691541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pinkninja/pseuds/Pinkninja
Summary: Booker has no idea what's happening. One minute there's a strange woman in his kitchen in Paris, the next he's picking bits of himself off the kill-floor in South Sudan. Surely if he gets another shot at that nightmare, he'll do better this time, right?Or: Booker Time Loop AU, he's stuck re-living of the events of the film, and he's barely holding anything together.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache & Booker | Sebastien & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusef & Nicky | Nicolò
Comments: 143
Kudos: 177





	1. Chapter 1

It's amazing how much expectations change. The shitty little half below-ground Parisian apartment is twice as large as anything Booker had in his first life, with more conveniences and furnishings than he had for his first few decades of immortality. He'd been, somehow, more worse off back then than he was now. 

All things considered, this is actually an improvement to how he was in, say, 1853. Then, he had slept in alleys and dormitories when he could afford it, and at the time he thought he was alone in the world. Now, he has a roof, a table and chairs, and a hundred year clock counting down until he'll see a familiar face again.

Yay, progress.

And he’s just smashed the bottle of swill that was supposed to last him the rest of the night. Pay no attention to the fact that it was already down to the dregs. He scuffs his boot through the glass and flops on the stairs.

Booker once charmed his way through a conversation at an ambassador’s ball while simultaneously directing Andy through the Parisian sewer system he had memorised. Now he’s too dizzy to even do the double task of both standing upright and taking out his keys.

So yeah. Expectations change.

His senses are dulled, and rusted, but even a sabre buried in the dirt for a couple of centuries can cut and kill. He's not a complete waste of space, despite what he often tells himself. He knows when his apartment has been compromised. He notices the door is unlocked the moment his hand touches it, then his gun is out and he's pushing through to the aforementioned shitty apartment, at the ready.

A woman is in his kitchenette, in a red coat, pouring herself a glass of water.

She knows his name.

"Booker." She says, with a smile. "It's nice to finally meet you."

Her face, it's blurry through the fog of alcohol. He tries to focus, to understand what he’s seeing.

Then she pulls a gun from her coat and shoots him through the eye.

* * *

Booker has been shot in the head more times than he can be bothered to count. He knows what it feels like to wake up.

It's not usually like this.

His body hurts all over, ripped to shreds by a barrage of bullets and sharp stabs of pain in every limb. He's cold, and it's dark.

She must have shuttered all the windows, or dragged him down to the catacombs, but that can't be right. The space is lit with cool blue floodlights,and there are other people, soldiers standing around, and bodies on the floor beside him.

A bullet pops out of his face and rattles on the concrete floor.

The bodies begin to rise.

That's Joe, beside him, pushing on his shotgun to kneel up, and Andy too, further along.

Booker doesn't just feel the pain of his body repairing from certain death anymore, now he feels confused.

“Wha-?” He says, then Andy charges at the soldiers, full of fury, and the soldiers open fire and Booker gets shot again.

* * *

“What the hell was that, Book?” Andy says, when all the soldiers have been dispatched. “You choked.”

She hauls him up to his feet by the tac vest and pulls his beanie off his head, searching for the proof that he's healing, that his time hasn't come yet.

“Wha-?” Booker says again.

“Off day, huh?” Joe prods him with a grin. He's wearing his backwards cap, and is not currently staring daggers into Booker's soul. Well. Interesting.

Andy is apparently satisfied that Booker still has that tricky thing called immortality, and stalks off to destroy the cameras.

“Don't mind her,” Nicky murmurs. “You had her worried.”

“What the fuck,” is all Booker can force out.

“I agree.” Joe grimaces.

“Where are the girls?” Nicky asks.

“There were no girls,” Andy says, pulling her labrys from the camera in the wall. “We've been set up.”

Finally getting his bearings, Booker, appropriately, freaks.

He pulls up his machine gun, muzzle and flashlight pointed directly at Joe's face.

“Whoa,” Joe says, raising his hands. “Sorry, I must have touched a nerve. You've been doing great today. Excellent form as always.”

“What the fuck is going on?” Booker demands. “This some kind of sick joke?”

“Apparently. The shoes were a grotesque touch,” Andy says. She turns and huffs like this is the first time she’s seen all three of her boys with weapons drawn on each other. It isn’t. “Now what?”

Booker doesn't flinch at the point of Nicky's sword hovering in his face.

“This really is a new low.” Booker sneers at them. “You couldn't just let me wallow in peace?”

Joe moves slowly, but still raises his curved blade. “This mission was your idea,” Joe reminds him.

“What mission?” Booker demands.

“This one.” Andy inclines her head at the carnage behind her. “South Sudan, the girls that got taken. Only apparently they didn't.”

Well, that makes no sense.

“No, no.” Booker shakes his hair out of his eyes, muzzle drifting between the other two immortals but not daring to cross Andy, not again. Not after what he did. “The set up was two weeks ago. It worked, we got captured.”

No one says anything, but their faces are horrified, which, being honest, is not a good sign.

“Where's Nile?” He asks.

“Who?”

Booker slowly lowers his gun.

Andy's eyes are piercing and clear and very, very worried.

“You still got a bullet rattling around in that head of yours?” She asks. Her voice is casual, but the axe at her side is still dripping blood like it’d be happy to divorce his head from his shoulders. Booker’s head is not always on the best of terms with the rest of him, but he would very much like to keep the whole thing together for the kids.

“No, no, I’m fine, you-”  _ fuck, she’s been shot _ , “fuck, fuck, fuck.” Booker drops his weapon and bats away Nicky’s sword to rush to Andy. He checks her all over, the blood on her face, her clothes scattered with bullet holes. She should be dead.

She’s not. She’s standing there, whole and complete and definitely not impressed.

“You want to explain-?” She starts.

“No, you explain!” Booker jabs her in one of the bullet wounds on her shoulder and she doesn't even flinch. “Why did you bring me back here? Back to the scene of the crime just to rub it in my face?”

“Booker.” It’s Nicky’s softest voice, which never bodes well. “What crime?”

They're really gonna make him say it?

“The, you know, my deal with Merrick and Copley.” Booker forces out. “To solve our little problem of immortality.”

Instead of Joe's expression on the banks of the Thames, the look of absolute disdain, he just cocks his head. “Merrick. Isn’t that some pharma company?”

“You did this?” Andy asks cooly, swinging her axe to gesture at the room. “You led us to the slaughter?”

Uhhh...

“No?” He says weakly.

Too late.

Booker thought the broken grief in Andy’s eyes after he shot her, quite literally, in the back was bad, but he would rather go right back (forward?) to that moment right now than endure another moment of her barrage of yelling.

Andy, as is known, has a set of lungs and fire enough in her belly to burn hotter than the sun. She's also been known to wield insults so fierce that more than one home in Georgian England had to have a physician stop to care for a man gone into a fever from being berated by Andromache the Scythian.

The sun has risen and they’re digging a hole in the desert to bury their bloodied garments, and she's still going.

“And another thing!” She’s still yelling. There have been five ‘another things’.

Nicky is worse. He doesn’t yell. He silently judges and condemns and wow, the man really was cut out to be a priest, huh? He turns his gaze towards Booker, pinning him under his steely gaze.

_ We’re disappointed, _ his eyes say,  _ we expected more from you. _

By the time they’re done berating him, Booker still hasn’t gotten a word in edgewise and is starting to believe the whole rotten business was a terrible dream. Come on, a new immortal in the mix, being captured, an exile, Andy losing her immortality? Exactly the sort of worst-case scenario that his pessimistic half-empty brain would have cooked up.

Except usually, in his case, the glass isn’t so much half-empty as fully-drunk.

The tricky thing about walking your friends into a set up mission is that there is no extraction. Their long helicopter ride and walk to the facility did not come with a return ticket, which leaves plenty of time while walking through the desert for more yelling and complaining. Booker grows more and more certain that his memories of going through with the betrayal, of shooting Andy and being captured, of being rescued by Nile must have all been nothing but a fever dream. Yeah. That’s the explanation.

They’ve been walking for some hours, Andy hardly losing steam with her barrage, until Nicky gently nudges the conversation away from all of Booker’s failings, and towards more bland comments about their time in Turkey and what they were missing in Marrakesh. Booker stays silent, more and more convinced he’d imagined those last few weeks. But then, Joe complains about the restaurant. 

“And the restaurant, Nicky!” Joe cries.

Nicky releases a string of colourful language targeting Booker’s ancestry.

“Would you shut up about the restaurant?” Booker shoots back. He’s heard these complaints before. “ _ Ooh, French-Moroccan fusion, you simply must try it, chicken pastilla, and so romantic! _ ”

Nicky has stopped trudging up the hill and is staring at him with those freaky eyes.

“What?” Booker says defensively. “You told me about it.”

“When?” Nicky asks.

“I dunno. Yesterday.”

Nicky turns his gaze to Joe, who backs up his husband every time. “No, we didn’t.”

Booker’s mouth gets away from him. “Yes, you did, it was the place with live music, Le Comptoir something or another.”

The couple shares a glance.

“That’s what I was about to say.” Joe says, a crease between his eyebrows. “I definitely didn't tell you yet.”

Booker is saved from having to explain something he can't explain by Andy calling from the front of the line.

“They have our location,” she says, “they know who we are, what we are. What else do they know, Book?”

Booker’s heart is in his throat as he admits his failings again. “Copley knows safehouses Alpha through Juliet, just the ones northwest of Cairo. I knew you’d want to go after him. I was supposed to make contact, lead you back to him.”

There’s a beat of silence as they stare at him.

“Fucking hell, Booker.” Joe groans.

“Did you tell him about Malta?” Nicky asks.

“Ew, no, gross. You can keep that dirty little secret to yourself.”

“Then we scramble the plan.” Andy decides. “And I don’t much care to look at you right now, Booker. So we split up.” She’s looking down the valley at some train-tracks. “Follow the tracks. I’ll go north,” she points at Joe and Nicky, “you go south. We catch the first train going our directions.”

That’s not what happened in Booker’s dream.

“What about me?” Booker asks.

“You walk. East.” Andy has no sympathy. “Everyone, take a few months. Muddy your trail, stay off the grid. We’ll meet at the Whiskey Site on the first day of September. Then we decide what to do with you, Booker.”

Three months is a lot better than a hundred years. Booker will take it. He says his goodbyes and trudges along, it’s not his first time stuck somewhere without resources or a way out. He’s adaptable. The weather is uncharacteristic to the region in that it’s not overwhelmingly hot, so the walk is tolerable. It’s long after midday and his stomach is cramping and his body is bone tired when he arrives at a small town with electricity and a spot in the shade for him to fall against a twisted tree and have a quick sleep.

He’s been fighting all night and walking all day, and he still has a niggling feeling that this morning he was in a Parisian grocery store. It’s an image that he can’t quite shake. But still, he lets himself slip into sleep, the world can wait an hour or two.

_ A knife, half a nametag, big wide eyes. Choking on blood- _

Booker startles awake, grabbing at his throat.

Fuck. Fuck.

That's too damn freaky. No way, no way in hell his mind cooked up a new immortal only to be right about it.

He jolts up and rushes into the town. He tries half a dozen languages to ask for a computer, for internet, and only succeeds when he mimes out typing and waves a banknote.

When he’s finally seated in front of a desktop that has seen better days, he boots up the search engine and types in two words.

_ Nile Freeman. _

He gets a few hits. A Chicago Highschool newspaper features a Nile in both the athletics and art sections. As well, Booker finds her public service record as Corporal Freeman, Marine.

He accesses his backchannels and finds she was stationed in an undisclosed location in Afghanistan. A bit more digging reveals she received transfer orders to Germany, only an hour or two ago. It must have been just after she resurrected.

Fuck.

It wasn't a hallucination. Whatever it was, whatever Booker believes he's lived through, it wasn't fake. He actually met one Nile Freeman, baby immortal.

So what the fuck happened?

He never got the info from Andy, where exactly Nile was picked up. And they're split up right now, no way to communicate, co-ordinate.

Okay. Focus, Le Livre. Focus.

He's back in time. Somehow. Two weeks or so. Back to experience the worst thing he's ever done and not back early enough to stop it.

But already, it's different to how he imagined it. Remembered it, whatever. He told them he betrayed them, and the plan changed already.

Andy's going north. That'll put her on the right track to find Nile anyway. The dreams will tell him if Andy tracks her down.

They're off the grid, and if they avoid the continent and put their usual disappearing act skills to use, Copley isn't likely to get wind of their tracks for months, right?

It also means Booker won't be able to talk to the others for another three months, won't be able to explain what happened to him.

But he doesn’t know what happened anyway, so, hey, what’s the rush?

He rubs a hand across his jaw, and ugh, he needs some mouthwash.

The handful of phrases he knows in Nuer manages to get him a series of bus tickets to get himself to Mogadishu. He doesn’t have water, and suffers two bouts of heatstroke before he gets to the bustling city.

Booker doesn’t have more than a couple of centuries behind him, but he’s savvy. He can make enough money to live on with a 40 euro phone and an internet connection. So he does.

Sure, it’s scamming, but that's how all he knew before he died, and as his grandmother always said, start as you mean to go on.

He watches the dreams carefully, sees how Andy sits across from Nile in some hole in South-East Asia, stubborn and silent. He sees flashes of streets and watching a hand that must be Andy's picking through different materials and foods at markets.

Joe and Nicky don't show up in the dreams, they must have decided to keep their distance. Wait for the whole Merrick thing to blow over. Before it even happened. Yeah, that's the plan.

Four weeks into living in Mogadishu, Booker gets the uncanny feeling that he's being watched.

Every time he turns around sharply in public, he sees the sweep of movement, ducking out of the way, behind a wall or into a store. It puts him on edge.

But he knows how those shady corporate-hired mercenaries work. He keeps exposed, too public to take down or out without a million videos streamed worldwide.

They wouldn't dare.

It's a bright Sunday afternoon when Booker gets shot again. It's almost sloppy, twice to the gut and one to the ankle before he goes down. People are screaming, phones are out and filming, and as another bullet goes through his heart and drains him of blood, he thinks of all the streamed videos that will be online by the time he wakes up. Public, indisputable proof of immortals walking among them.

_ Andy's going to kill me _ Booker thinks, as he dies.

* * *

He groans. A bullet falls from his cheek and clatters to the cold concrete floor. It's dark, chilling, and familiar.

The figure beside him gets to his knees, and it's Joe, and Booker is back on the kill-floor in South Sudan.

Goddamn it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes I know the mid credits scene has it 6 months after the movie, but I like my version better.  
> Thanks so much for reading! Please consider leaving a review! I love them all so much!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for this chapter and all following: Discussions and depictions of death / suicide, with the usual proviso of this fandom that it's not really sticking!

Booker wakes up on the kill-floor in South Sudan. Again.

Third time's the charm?

He doesn't get caught out this time. He recognises the place and the smell and Joe getting to his feet. Booker is only half a step behind the others as they charge forward.

Joe dashes off to his right, to cover Nicky and leaving Booker exposed, the bastard. Booker rushes forward to a pair of soldiers in front of him, pulling his machine gun up and bracing it against his shoulder. He lets loose a stutter of fire, then ducks under the wild sweep of one of the soldiers. In return, he bashes him in the head with the butt of his gun. 

He gets locked into a grappling fight with another, and gets thrown to the ground. He catches a few more bullets in his gut and shoulders and loses his bearings, so he turns the momentum into a roll, and oh, is it very satisfying when he shoots upwards and through the next soldier. The bullets sing through him and shatter the light behind. and through a soldier with a knife and the bullets sing through him and shatter the light behind. A few more quick movements, and the last of the bodies fall to the ground by Andy's axe.

“Everyone still with me?” Andy asks.

“ _ Si, _ ” comes Nicky's answer,  _ “tutto bene. _ ”

“Yeah,” Joe says, spitting a bullet to the floor, “but I'm very pissed off.” 

“Book?”

“Yeah, yeah, I'm with you.” For the very loosest definition of it. He scans the other three, their blood-splattered faces.

“Where are the girls?” Nicky asks, still out of breath. His eyes are wide as he stares about at the carnage. 900 years in the business of killing and he still takes death very seriously.

“There never were any girls.”

There's a beat, and Booker collects his thoughts as Andy systematically destroys the cameras.

Splitting the team up didn't work, he still ended up dead and back here. Whatever is happening to him, Booker has a chance to make it right. Maybe.

He leans against the wall, mind racing. Joe looks about the room too, and has a second take at Booker's face. Does he notice anything amiss?

Joe comes over to him, looking more than a little wary. He grips Booker's shoulder with a warm hand.

“Hey Booker, I'm sorry,” Joe says, squeezing Booker gently. “It's not your fault. You couldn't have known the mission was a set up.”

Oh, fuck you, al-Kaysani and your sympathy eyebrows.

“Thanks, man. That means a lot.”

Nicky is there too, his eyes shining. “Your heart was in the right place.”

Well, he can't tell them about the set up now. Not with the pair of them staring at him like that. He shifts on his feet and clears his throat. Mercifully, they turn and give him space. 

* * *

Booker mostly keeps quiet as they bury the bloody evidence of their clothes. Andy is grim, her passionate shout of “we've done nothing” rings in his ears.

What have they got, what's the plan?

Booker takes stock.

The compound was well guarded but poorly supplied. A few 4WD vehicles still have keys and petrol enough to make it somewhere, but they came in without a trace, they're not going to leave any evidence behind on the way out. The soldiers had enough unfired rounds to restock their ammunition, and those with more old-fashioned weapons (not that there's anything wrong with that) took a moment to rip some clothes into rags and clean their blades. They've got their packs with a few personal items, a change of clothes and basic supplies.

Nile is going to wake up alive sometime this morning. The next time they dream, Andy will know how to get to her, like the first time. Then it's just a matter of protecting Andy and avoiding capture. Shouldn't be too hard, now Booker isn't leading Merrick right to him. All he was supposed to do was ping Copley when they stopped running, and turn himself in if needed. If he doesn’t do that, then no worries, right?

“I’m sorry, guys,” Booker says, his voice a little more gruff than usual as he throws down the shovel. “This whole mission was my fault. I shouldn’t have agreed.” And yeah, if it rings a little truer than needed, what’s it to you?

“It’s not your fault, Booker. We all went into this knowing the risks.” Damn, Nicky.

“They know who we are. They know what we are.” Andy says through gritted teeth. “We have to find Copley. We have to tie this thing off.”

Nope, bad call, Andy.

“I don't think that's such a good idea,” Booker warns. “He knows what we are, he'll be looking for us.”

“He's ex-CIA,” Andy returns. “He's got connections but no backing.”

“We don't know that,” Booker says. "He could be trying to take us in.”

Andy jabs an angry finger at the compound. “If that leaks? Gets beyond Copley? It's a wildfire that we'll never be able to control.”

“We'll be hunted,” Joe says.

“For the rest of our lives,” Nicky finishes.

Booker puts his hands on his hips and drops his head. The rest of their lives. That's a long time to run.

“No, we get to Copley, we put this thing behind us.” Andy gets to her feet, jaw clenched.

“And then what?” Booker asks.

“And then nothing.” She hoists her pack into her shoulder. “The world can burn for all I care. I’m done.”

* * *

Booker doesn't have a lot to thank Past Booker for. The version before this repeating business, the version that walked down onto the kill-floor and only did it once. That version of himself was a sad, sorry state of a man that brought nothing but trouble.

And his hip flask. That version also brought his hip flask with him to the kill-floor, which means Booker has it now, and for that he is thankful.

No one so much as looks twice at how tightly Booker clings to it and how deeply he drinks, which is a good deal more than usual. The fact that they don't notice is… disheartening. He hadn't realised he'd been that bad. He thought he'd actively tried to keep a clear head the first time around. But this time he needs it to get through Joe and Nicky's complaining about missing out on Le Comptoir du Pacha,  _ oh, the chicken pastilla was beautifully tender, wasn't it, Joe? Oh, Nicky, you looked so beautiful in the candlelight. You simply must try it, it's a French-Moroccan fusion, and there's live music! _

As soon as they're on the freight train, Booker drops himself into the corner against the pallets and throws a hand over his face, ready to start the next step in this god-awful day.

The others follow his lead, Joe and Nicky tuck themselves into each other and Andy sitting up against the wall. Booker has the combination of both a soldier's and a drunk's ability to fall asleep anywhere, so he does.

* * *

Before he did this the first time around, Booker's vision dreams consisted only ever of Quynh. It wasn't every night that he dreamt of her drowning, and the visions happen less when he goes to sleep drunk. But sometimes, particularly when he's more drunk than usual, his visions of her mixed with his more general dreams, resulting in bizarre contradictions. He dreamt of himself drowning on dry land, and Quynh standing over him, he dreamt of water that follows him out of the ocean when he crawls free. For a moment, there would be hope that something had changed for her, that she'd escaped her prison, but then a night out two later, he would dream again of the iron cage and her bloodied fists beating against it.

He's learnt not to dwell on these strange offshoots of the usual drowning dreams, learnt not to mention them. After the third time he woke up, telling what he saw and giving the other three hope, then taking that hope away a night or two later, he learnt to keep all mentions of Quynh to himself. The false hope wasn't worth the heartbreak.

All this to say, Booker doesn't have much experience with the visions. His most recent four weeks in Mogadishu were the first time he actually had practice seeing another immortal's life through his dreams, piecing it together. He didn't see her in pain again in those dreams, only sparring and talking with Andy. It was nice, in a way. A little touch of home.

So he jolts awake on the train and is struck with that same first fear and pain of feeling Nile's throat being cut. His hand is around his neck and the air is forced out of him. He can't talk, he can't breathe. He's drowning but this time it's blood.

It's just as hard as it was the first time he did this.

Joe turns to him, he's suddenly got his sketchbook out, and Booker is dimly aware that they've been talking. He was hanged, his first death. The hand on his neck isn't leaving easily.

“What did you see?” Joe asks.

Booker summons his tongue to move. “I saw part of a name tag.”

“Uh, yeah. Free… Free something.”

“Corporal,” Booker adds. “Freeman.”

Hopefully that helps Andy find her quicker, and isn't too obviously out of place.

“Dirt floor, clay walls,” Nicky says.

They go back and forth a bit on details, glimpses and ideas, but Booker keeps his eyes focused on Andy. All her worldly knowledge isn’t just for baklava.

“She’s a Marine. Combat, or near-combat duty,” she says. “Afghanistan.” She drags her fingers through her hair. “It’s been over 200 years. Why now?”

_ And how? _ Booker asks himself.

“Everything happens for a reason, boss,” Nicky reminds her, voice soft as always. She just scoffs.

Before Joe can even get the words out, Booker jumps in. “We have to find her.”

“No, this… this  _ thing _ with Copley, it has to come first.” Andy shoots back. “We're no use to anyone exposed like this.”

“She's terrified right now, we have to help her!”

Huh, that's surprising, Booker suddenly arguing the counter.

“We all remember what it was like.” Nicky says softly. “Even you, Andromache.”

And there it is, that build up of frustration exploding out of Andy, of being stuck with her back against the wall with nowhere to go but forward and through.

Andy stands, grabbing her bag. “I’ll handle the retrieval.”

“What about us?” Booker asks, even though he already knows.

“Get to France. Use the Charlie safe house. I’ll meet you there.” She stares directly into Booker's soul. “Find Copley.”

Joe puts some finishing touches on his drawing and rips it out for her.

“Jesus. She’s just a baby.”

* * *

Joe's always got connections. Even stranded in the middle of nowhere, get him access to a phone and he's calling up someone he met once whose uncle's neighbour has a prop-plane and permission to land in one of the smaller airports in the EU. From there it's just a clever series of check throughs and some light hacking and they're well on their way to Paris.

Along the way, they fill the time, as they often do, with word games.

Today's feature, the same as the first time around, is " _ books that sound more interesting with one letter removed _ ".

Joe drums his fingers on the tray in front of him as he thinks.

“Charlie and the Chocolate Factor.” Nicky pronounces.

“Oh, that's a good one.” Joe nods. “A Wrinkle in Tim.”

They started with newer releases and are, roughly, making their way back in time. Before the plane descends into Paris, they'll be discussing ancient titles lost to history and going and forth about their translations of words that have shifted meaning over time.

“Der Steppwolf.”

“That's two letters,” Joe says.

“Oh, but it's a cute image, isn't it?” Nicky says. “Little tap dancing shoes on his paws.” Nicky knows just how to push his buttons, because Joe’s face crumbles at the idea, and Nicky wins the point.

Booker grabs the steward as he walks by, orders another drink and tries not to look too desperate.

“Fine then, if we're breaking spelling rules,” Joe considers carefully. “Aas Parfüm.”

Nicky pulls a face. “Gross. Liver Twist.”

“Speaking of, Booker, you want to get in on this?” Bless you, Joe, for reaching out, but Booker is well into his cups already and it's getting hard to think. He gropes around for one of the answers from last time.

“Uh, Ale of Two Cities,” he says.

“Shit, I was building to that one.” Nicky swears. “Hmm…Far from the Madding Crow.”

Joe grins. “They made a film of that, have you seen it?”

Booker shrugs. “No, never caught it.”

“Hmm, me neither.” Joe leans forward and starts fiddling with the screen on the back of the seat in front of him. “I wonder if it's on demand.”

"I haven't been keeping up with cinema lately,” Booker admits.

“Oh? What was the last film you saw in the cinema?” Nicky asks.

“I dunno. Some western.”

“They haven't been making westerns for decades.”

“Really? Shame.”

“My turn?” Joe shoots off a crooked grin. “Ride and Prejudice.”

“Behave.” Nicky scolds.

Now this is familiar territory.

Booker sits forward with a smirk. “The Holy Bile.”

Nicky flicks him on the ear.

* * *

Booker can't relax in Goussainville. He hasn’t pinged Copley like he did the first time, but he’s on edge. The last time he was here, in this moment of time, he was waiting to hear back from Copley about the next steps, about turning himself in if needed. They hadn’t exactly… left the kill-floor in a clean state for samples. Booker had warned him about what Andy would do, but Copley had remained certain they could make it work.

Truth be told, Booker hadn’t actually handed Copley over that much information. Copley figured out most of the safehouses himself, and the rest he pieced together from little off-hand remarks from Booker before Booker had even known he was being investigated. Copley had done his research like the good intelligence agent he was.

So, Copley is a smart man, just because Booker hasn’t told him they’re in the Charlie safehouse, doesn’t mean he hasn’t figured it out. Doesn't mean they're not planning the attack.

Booker keeps a close eye on Joe and Nicky as they sweep out Goussainville, turn on the water and power and make it habitable once more. Booker is making himself look busy on his laptop, ostensibly on the hunt for Copley, but actually letting his mind whir. Joe goes out for a necessary grocery shop, and Booker tries very hard to keep his nervousness under-wraps.

His burner phone buzzes. “Oh, thank God,” he says, excusing himself from Nicky’s unnerving company and taking the call in the Vestry.

“Hey, boss.”

“You found Copley?” Nothing but pleasantries with this woman.

“Uh, nothing certain. Maybe something soon.” He's got to delay until Andy and Nile get here, at least. “He knows we’re hunting him. We've got to be smart.”

She laughs down the line. “Yeah, why'd I pick you for the job?” And Booker laughs.

Andy says, “Keep looking. He’s doing the same to us.” She sighs. “I have the new one.”

“And? How is she?”

“Well, she stabbed me, so I think she has potential.”

Oh, you have no idea, Andromache.

“I’ll see you soon. Get here quick.”

* * *

Did he do everything right? He tried to keep quiet on their journey to Goussainville, let things fall the same way they did the first time around. Make sure they're all together before he pushes for their next move.

He still hasn't quite figured out what that is yet, but he has time.

After Joe comes back from the shops, he lets Nicky have the kitchen and tries to set about making the old church not only habitable, but pleasant. Always a bit house-proud, that one, even when he doesn't have any home to settle for more than a decade. Once it's clean and tidy, and Booker is still trying to figure out the breech points he was too exploded to notice last time, Joe finds the small rubber ball again.

It might have been a squash ball at some point in history, before finding its home in the Goussainville church.

_ Pa-thunk, pa-thunk _

There it goes again, being bounced against the wall.

_ Pa-thunk, pa-thunk _

“Joe,” Booker says.

“Hmm?”

_ Pa-thunk, pa-thunk _

Booker waves a hand at his laptop, eyebrows raised.

_ Pa-thunk, pa-thunk _

“Oh yeah, how's it going?”

Booker huffs. “I'm getting there.”

“Okay, cool. Let me know if there's anything I can do.”

_ Pa-thunk, pa-thunk, pa-thunk _

“Do you mind?”

Joe catches the ball easily and tosses it back at the wall. “Mind what?”  _ Pa-thunk _

Booker rolls his eyes and turns back to the screen. His notes section in the bottom corner just reads  _ what now? _

The sun is threatening to dip below the horizon, the sky is grey and bland. Nicky peers out the window by the little kitchen they've set up along the wall of the main hall. “I think that's them,” he says, and wipes his hands on a dishcloth, then throws it over his shoulder.

Joe jumps to his feet and watches the door. Nicky walks past him, touching Joe's back in a comforting gesture before he opens the door.

“Everyone, this is Nile.” Andy says, pushing through. She never stands on ceremony. Nile follows behind, her eyes wide and wary. “Nile, this is Joe, and Nicky. That over there is Booker.”

Everyone nods and greets her in turn.

Nike shifts her bag on her shoulders, eyes darting between the three of them. Booker doesn't know what to do with his hands.

“You guys are…” she waves a hand, “immortal too?”

“Yes, we are.” Joe says.

“We're like you.” Nicky adds. Is he purposefully hamming up his soft expression?

“Uhh,” Booker really needs to contribute something. What did he say last time? It was so long ago. “How was your trip?”

“Rough.” Andy says. “She tried to hijack the plane.”

“Oh!” Joe looks delighted.

Nile looks furious. “You broke my arm,  _ and  _ you shot me in the head!”

Andy shrugs, walking through the glass dividers to the other room to put down her stuff.

“Come, Nile,” Nicky gestures at the table. “Please, everyone, sit. It has been a long day, and we all need strength.”

It's not his usual fine artistry for special occasions, just simple enough to be acceptable to everyone's tastes, no matter what the unknown of Nile was like. He places a few bowls in the centre, salad with baby spinach, carrots and celery, and a bowl of roasted, tournee cut potatoes. The peperonata he plates up for them, long soft strands of bell peppers dished out straight from the Dutch oven.

Booker has a simple job, find a handful of clean cups and mugs for the red wine. Then, after that… then he's got a very complicated job.

How the hell can he make these things right without letting on it’s all his fault?

Booker keeps his hand up to his mouth during dinner, stopping the others from reading his expressions as much as possible, but even still, he finds himself watching her, and looking away when he's caught.

He's fond of the kid. So what? She has guts, he's seen it.

Joe and Nicky are throwing glances her way, too, and communicating with each other in that silent way Booker is still learning to read. But Nile isn't having any of that. She puts down her fork and confronts them head on.

“So are you good guys or bad guys?”

Atta girl.

“Depends on the century.”

Nicky leans back in his chair. “We fight for what we think is right.”

Booker holds back from snorting into his potatoes. Yeah, us and every other army in history, Nicky. Nile scans their faces, and Booker has to look away. Why does he feel like everyone can see his dirty soul?

“How are you all in my dreams?” She asks.

“We dream of each other. They stop when we meet.”

“Why?”

Booker picks at his potatoes. He knows he should contribute something, but all he wants to do is fade into the shadows and reappear in a few dozen years. If he gets to. Shit, what if he has to come back and live this day  _ yet again _ ?

“I believe it’s because we… we’re meant to find each other,” Nicky says. “It’s like destiny.”

Booker can't help grimacing at that.

“You don't agree.” Nile guesses.

“Mmm,” Booker grunts and nods, unwillingly brought into the conversation. Ah, that's what he said last time. “It's more like… misery loves company.”

Nile looks to Andy, waiting for her opinion.

She pokes her spoon at Booker. “What he said.”

Now comes the history. All laid out in small digestible chunks for Nile to understand, and it's refreshing, too, to have someone react appropriately by being freaked out.

“It used to take years to track a new one,” Nicky explains. “Booker was the last. 1812.”

Nile's jaw drops and she turns to him. “No way.”

“Yeah, I died fighting with Napoleon.”

This feels natural at least, a conversation of simple facts.

“So… you’re even older than him.”

“Mmm…” Joe talks around a mouthful of peperonata, waving a hand in typical Joe style. “Nicky and I met in the Crusades.”

“The Crusades?”

“The love of my life was of the people I’ve been taught to hate,” Nicky says.

“We…” Joe chuckles. “We killed each other.”

“Many times.”

Those two saps. Booker laughs into his mug rather than scoff.

Nile's eyes track Andy as she takes her seat. “You’re the oldest,” she surmises.

“Yeah.”

“So how old are you?”

The boys exchange looks.

“Old.”

“How old?”

Now that's the question that has been subject to many long nights of debate between the three men.

Andy sighs. “Too old.”

Nile looks about the room. “So we really never die.”

Andy repeats her old adage. “Nothing that lives lives forever.”

“But…” Poor girl, her mind must be racing. ”You said that we were immortal.”

“I know what I said.” Andy shoots back. “And we mostly are, but we can die.”

Abruptly, Booker stands and leaves the room. He can't hear this part, not knowing what's approaching for Andy. He closes his eyes and all he can see is her pale face, shocked and disbelieving.

He stays in the other room, trying to catch his breath, to slow his heart, until Nicky brings Nile inside to show her the beds.

“Take your pick, only the larger one will be mine and Joe's.”

Hesitating, Nile sets her pack down on the bed at the end, closest to the window for a ready escape if needed. Smart girl.

She looks at Booker like she’s waiting for him to start a conversation, all expectantly, and he excuses himself, pushing back out to get some space, some distance. Some air.

Booker is halfway across the hall when Andy calls out, already screwing the lid of the wine bottle. “She wants to talk to her family.”

Booker has the sudden urge to defend this poor confused creature.

“Of course she does.” He says sharply. God, has Andy forgotten everything about being mortal?

Andy smirks. “I thought you'd be dying to have that conversation with her.”

Booker's dinner turns to ash in his mouth. He puts his back to her and finds himself facing the kitchenette. He busies himself putting away the leftovers and cleaning up.

Joe and Nicky excuse themselves to sleep, sneaking past the glass dividers into the bedroom and murmuring quietly to Nile as they settle down on the bed. Then it's just Booker and Andy.

So, how to delicately ask this…

“I've been thinking-”

_ “You've _ been thinking?” Andy says with a wry grin. “Never a good sign.”

Booker rolls his eyes. Andy reaches for another bottle, but Booker beats her to it.

“With Nile, talking about our dreams again. Has it, was there any other powers you've experienced before?”

A big grin breaks out on Andy's face. “Powers?”

“Our healing.”

“You call that a magic power?”

“Whatever the hell it is.” Booker waves the hand that has the bottle. “Was there ever anything other than our immortality and dreams?”

She's not taking it seriously. Why would she?

“Like what?”

“Like…”  _ time travel? _ “I don't know, super strength, flying, uhh, premonition, time jumps.”

“Time jumps?” Andy laughs. “You've been into your pulpy sci-fi books again.”

“What, is it any weirder than what we're already dealing with?” He takes a swig right from the bottle.

She shrugs. “I guess.”

“So, like. You ever heard of anything like that? Something more than just our healing and dream?”

To her credit, Andy takes a moment to think. She shakes her head. “No.”

“No?”

“Never heard of anything outside of our norm.”

_ Damn _ .

He grips the countertop. Andy's never encountered something like what he's going through.  _ Andy _ , with all her years. So what the hell?

A hand touches his shoulder and he damn near crumbles.

“You doing okay, Book?” she asks.

Fuck, he's missed them, missed Andy in particular. He thought… well. Before this day, the first time he lived it, she was traveling for a year, then she was mortal, and saying goodbye. Then the next time he saw her she verbally tore him a new one.

But now she's here, and she's his best friend, and Booker has a chance to make it right this time.

“Yeah, yeah.” He nods his head. “I'm doing fine.” He takes a seat in the plush chair that once had his guts strewn all over it, but now looks about as clean as any chair that's been left in an abandoned church for fifty years. Andy takes the other one.

“How 'bout you, what did you get up to this last year?”

“Travelling, like I said,” Andy returns.

Booker stares at her over the lip of the wine bottle before passing it over. She sighs as she takes it from him.

So they talk, and it's nice. Booker's eyes prick with tears whenever he looks at her, but he waves it off as the strong vintage. They throw jibes back and forth for hours, little jabs at each other's disreputable character, until the world gets its familiar haze again.

Too late, he realises that Nile is going to wake up from her dream soon, and he hasn't even made a plan.

He tries to remember how they breached the church the first time. He remembers an explosion, and being in pieces. Was there a strange smell in the air when he woke up? His eyes were stinging. It was weeks ago. It feels like years.

The soldiers must have acted quickly, to take out incredible fighters like Joe and Nicky. But they were unprepared, their weapons stowed at the other end of the hall.

Booker swears it won't be the same this time. He just hasn't figured out how, yet.

Nile gasps awake, and Booker swears under his breath. The lights are switched on, and they can hear voices. Andy moves to stand, but Booker grabs her wrist.

He shakes his head, just a miniscule movement. Andy wrenches her arm free and stalks close to the glass partition to listen.

Nile hasn't yet learnt that she's not allowed to talk about Quynh. Booker stays as silent as he did the first time. It's not his place, and he's not willing to stick his neck out. Last time he did that, someone threw a noose around it.

He tries to pull Andy away, she doesn't need to hear this, but she's stubborn.

Booker hangs his head and scratches a hand through his hair. Fuck. He's already fucked it up.

Andy is talking to Nile now, something about losing a soldier, but Booker's heart is seizing in his chest.

“I feel her pain. Her rage.” Nile is saying, but Booker clenches the wall, gathering his strength. “She feels crazy.”

“Over 500 years in a box… at the bottom of the ocean…” Joe's eyes are shining. “It would make anyone insane.”

“That’s the reason why we dread capture,” says Nicky, and Booker can't stand it anymore.

“It's, guys,” he says, and his voice is rough. “I have a bad feeling.” His words are slurring more than normal. Fuck, Le Livre, keep it together.

“Sleep it off, Book,” Andy says, pushing past him.

“No! there's-” He chokes off an answer, “I think I heard something out there.”

Nicky, always alert quickly, sits up straight and grabs his pistol. “Where?” He asks.

He follows Booker's eyeline out the front of the church.

Andy snaps straight. “You think we were followed?”

What does it matter how they found us, they're here.

“I know they're here,” Booker says.

“How?”

Booker huffs and almost loses his footing as the room spins around him. “Because I've lived this day before.”

“How could you have lived it before?” Joe asks.

“I dunno. But I have. They're gonna bust through any second now, come on!”

Great, now Joe is looking at him like he's crazy. “You're crazy, man.” He laughs, but it's an incredulous sort of laugh.

Still, Joe and Andy both grab their weapons, and Booker reaches for a semi automatic rifle to pass to Nile. She just seems the type.

Andy stalks towards the far end of the hall. “If they're going to attack, they'll blast through here-”

An explosion rocks the church, throwing debris everywhere. 

Andy is thrown backwards, her head smashing against the sharp corner of the wall. A canister is thrown through the hole in the wall where the door used to be, gas spilling out. Booker shoves his nose into his shirt and throws himself towards Andy.

Nicky moves quickly, too, kicking the gas canister back outside, but the soldiers are already bursting through. Nicky gets shot, one, two times. He manages to get his pistol up and take down a soldier, but another is there right behind them and Nicky is mowed down.

Joe roars and throws himself into the fray. Booker lets him have his piece, and huddles over Andy.

“Come on, Andy. Come on,” he begs, cradling her head. His fingers are slicked with her blood, her skull fragments.

Her eyes are open and dull.

“Get back here, you bastard,” he whispers, pressing his forehead to hers.

But she's not healing.

Booker glances up, sees Nicky's limp body being pinned down and wrists bound with zip ties, Joe fighting desperately but being quickly overwhelmed. Even Nile is trying her best to hold out, but her eyes are big and terrified.

Booker puts his pistol in his mouth and, not for the first time, eats his own lead.

* * *

Booker wakes up on the kill-floor in South Sudan. Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hohoho, you're really in for it now, buddy! Special thanks to sal-si-puedes.tumblr.com for beta reading and making this lovely!  
> Thanks so much for reading! Please leave a review, I love them all so much!


	3. Chapter 3

“Okay, here's the deal.” Booker says, as soon as the last soldier's body has hit the floor and they've answered Andy's roll call.

The others are still panting, still stunned from coming back from the dead and the ambush. Booker has been here far too many times for that to bother him now.

“Something really strange is happening to me,” he announces, pulling off his beanie and ruffling his hair.

“Yeah,” Andy agrees, stalking the room like a tiger. “This was a setup.”

“Oh, right. That.” Booker says. “Yeah, this whole thing was a setup. The girls aren’t real, they weren’t kidnapped. Copley sent us here to get proof of our healing.”

Joe looks shocked, then he sees the cameras in the corners and he turns furious.

“The fucking gall,” he spits, cocking his shotgun one-handed and firing at a camera.

Booker lets them have their destructive rage.

“So, here’s what-” He starts, but Andy still has one shout of anger in her. He gives her a moment to pull her axe from the wall. “As I was saying. I’ve been jumping backwards in time.”

They all stare at him.

“Let me explain,” he offers. “Right, so today is today, right? But a minute ago, it was tomorrow. And before that it was a month into the future.”

Nicky blinks.

“What the hell are you on about, Booker?” Andy asks.

“Gah!” he buries his face in his hand, composes himself and tries to order his thoughts. “I keep jumping backwards in time. No matter what I do, I keep waking up here, in South Sudan.”

They keep staring at him. He’s gotta get better at this.

“I can prove it!” He insists. He starts pacing and almost trips over a soldier’s leg. He points an accusing finger at Joe. “You… you think the shoes were a particularly grotesque touch.”

Joe goes a bit cross-eyed at the finger in his face. “Well, they were.”

“See!” Vindication. “I knew you were going to say that!”

Joe sighs. “Of course you knew I was going to say that, Book. We hang out like, all the time.”

Andy swings her blood-dripped axe by her side. “Is there a bullet still rattling around in that head of yours, Booker?”

“Ah! Aha, no,” Booker holds up a hand to slow her down, “see, you asked me that the other time. There isn’t. Promise.”

Her eyes narrow. “What if I kill you, just to make sure?”

“No, because then I’ll just be having this conversation again in two minutes.” Booker shoots back.

Joe opens his mouth, but Booker beats him to it. “You think I’m crazy. You were going to say ‘you’re crazy, man’.”

Joe shrugs. “Well, you are.”

“Booker,” Nicky says gently, “if we have been jumping back in time, why don’t any of us remember?”

Huh. That one leaves Booker scratching the back of his neck. “Whatever it is, I think it’s only happening to me,” he decides eventually.

“Why you?”

_Because I’m the one that put us here._

“I don’t know,” he says simply. “It just is.”

* * *

If Andy keeps scowling like that, she's going to get forehead wrinkles lines before she even realises she's mortal again.

Wait, is she mortal again?

As they drag their tired, confused bodies from the kill-floor and walk out into the desert far enough to bury their bloodied clothes, Booker plays ‘careless’ with his Bowie knife and slices her on the shin.

“What the hell, Booker?” she yells, pulling away.

“Sorry, sorry.” He holds up his hands. Her skin heals up quickly. Okay, not mortal.

“If you really have been here before,” Nicky starts, looking thoughtful as usual, “what year am I thinking of?”

“What year are-? Nicky, how am I supposed to know that?”

“You said you've lived this day before,” Nicky says. “You should know what I'm about to say.”

“Well, you've never said that before.” Booker knows he sounds petulant, but can't help his tone.

“This makes no sense. Why would this be happening?” Andy asks.

They look at Booker. He looks aside at the rising sun.

“I don't know,” he says. “There's a lot of changes that happen around now. Maybe that has something to do with it.”

“Changes?” Nicky asks. “What sort of changes?”

Fuck it.

“A new immortal. She'll be dying for the first time any minute now.”

Andy sinks down and balances on the balls of her feet, head in her hands. “No. No, this can’t be happening.”

Booker sidles alongside her and pats her on the shoulder. “It's happening. It's happened a few times before already.”

She glares at him and elbows him in the thigh.

“Ouch!” Booker jumps backwards, rubbing at the spot she jabbed him.

“You’ll heal,” she says dryly.

His mouth opens, ready for the quick retort, but then snaps it shut.

“Who is this new immortal?” Nicky asks.

“We have to find her,” says Joe.

“Trust me, she can take care of herself,” Booker laughs. “I think what we need to do is get to Copley. He's the missing piece.”

“Copley?” Nicky asks.

“That son of a bitch,” Joe adds.

“I haven't heard from him yet,” Booker says. “Not since the first time. If we gotta get through this, we have to deal with him.”

“Why?”

“He tries to capture us, and sometimes he succeeds.”

That gets Andy's attention. She stands up sharply and stares at Booker. For a second he thinks he's going to get a repeat lecture and if he has to go through that again he's going to jump into the hole with all their gear and make his grave there.

“Captured,” she repeats. “How? Why?”

“His wife died. ALS,” Booker says. “It's degenerative.”

“And he knows about our healing,” Nicky assumes.

Booker nods. “He thinks we're the cure.”

“Fuck.” Andy looks away. She looks thoughtful, but Booker knows her well enough to know that mentally, she’s scrambling.

“Say we believe you,” she starts, “say we go along with this crazy notion of time jumps. What happens now?”

“I’m not sure,” Booker admits. “I haven’t told you before. I only just figured it out myself.”

“But we gotta get to Copley,” Andy says. “Do you at least know where he is?”

“Yeah, yeah. I've been there before.”

 _I put a bullet in you there,_ he doesn't say, _and it didn't come out._

“Alright. We get to Copley, we tie this thing off,” she decides. “No matter what, we can't let this leak, it'll become a wildfire we can't control. Then, then we figure out whatever's happening with you.”

Well, it's better than hoping the world burns.

Booker nods, throwing the last of the dirt onto their buried evidence and tossing away the shovel.

“Let's get going,” Andy says.

Why are they all looking at him? Oh, they're waiting for him to lead on. Booker doesn't like that at all.

He trudges up the same hill he has climbed three times before, and reluctantly takes the place at the start of the line.

They walk in silence for a while, until Booker realises something and turns around to face Nicky.

“What year were you thinking about?” He asks.

“Oh! It was something before… oh I forgot. Ask me next time.”

Great. If there is a next time.

After a full hour of walking, Booker stops and looks around.

“What is it?” Andy asks.

“We have to get on the train,” he says.

“What train?”

Joe points out into the distance, at a plume of kicked up dust moving away from them, too far to catch. “That train?”

“Yeah” Booker scrunches up his face. “That train.”

Andy has mastered the art of rolling her eyes at him.

* * *

Still, where there's train tracks, there's a path to civilization. They walk in silence for hours, until they reach a village where they can catch a crowded bus to the next town. Joe talks animatedly with an old man about his goat farming while the bus rocks back and forth on unpaved roads. And Andy speaks into her burner phone in a dozen languages one after the other, chasing up her leads for a lift out of here. Booker tucks his pack under his head and leans against the window.

“Hey,” Nicky rocks his shoulder from his seat across the aisle, “don't fall asleep.”

“What? Why?”

“Your…” Nicky makes a little jumping action with his fingers. “You said you always wake up in South Sudan.”

Booker looks at him, bemused and switches to Italian. Less likely to be known among travelers here. “I think it only happens when I die.”

“Right,” Nicky nods, brows furrowed. “I'll keep that in mind.”

Booker nods and shuts his eyes against the glare of the world.

_The flash of blade, blood spilling into dirt floors, shock jolting through her body, a uniform being thrown into a bag, a helicopter lifting upwards._

Booker startles awake with images of Nile again. It’s still a shock to the system, and Nicky is reaching out, gripping his shoulder. Booker bats his hand away and leans forward, rubbing his hand over his face.

“Gah, I’m okay. I’m okay,” he mutters. “It’s just the new one.”

Nicky hasn’t slept yet, those shadows under his eyes are a permanent fixture, but he’s watching Booker carefully. “Is she okay?”

“She just died, Nico, of course she’s not okay.” Booker says, aware that his voice has gone gruffer than normal.

Nicky looks to the side, like he’s considering sleeping to get his own glimpse of the new one.

“Who is she?”

Booker huffs a laugh. “She’s too good for us.”

Nicky stays silent, keeping his eyes on him. His head sways with the rocking of the bus and it’s almost hypnotic. Booker knows the tactic he’s using, being quiet to force the other person to fill the silence with the crucial information you’re after. He tries to wait it out, but Nicky has the patience of both a sniper and a priest, and Booker gives in.

“Her name is Nile Freeman. She’s amazing, she-” Booker cuts himself off, struggling to find the words. “She’s smart, and rightly skeptical. And she saved us when we were captured.”

There’s a twist in his gut at abandoning her, right when she needs them, but Booker’s made his decision. He’ll see it through.

Nicky’s jaw tenses. “Are you sure about all this?”

“Absolutely not,” Booker says ruefully. “But that’s how I go about most of my life.”

Andy taps her phone on the metal frame of the bus seats to get the attention of her team. “Hey. I got us passage to England. Booker, you’ve flown a Mi-1M Hare before, right?”

“Not since the Cold War,” Booker shrugs. “But I can do it.”

“Alright. Get some sleep. We'll be off the bus in two hours. With any luck we can get to Surrey by sundown,” Andy says.

They all nod like good soldiers. Booker throws an arm over his eyes and sinks into his familiar images, vision or not, of Quynh drowning and beating against her cage.

* * *

Booker stirs again with the rocking and the noise of the bus and he knows that they haven’t yet reached their destination. Shouldn't be too far off, now.

While he slept, Joe's seat-mate must have reached his stop, because Nicky has moved to share the seat with him. They're sitting beside each other now, right in front of Booker, and murmuring. Booker keeps his eyes firmly shut, and their voices are a comforting rustle of noise until he picks up on his own name and starts listening intently.

“But this is Booker.” Joe says in a harsh whisper.

Nicky rushes to reply, “I know, I know, but you and I both know he is…” he switches to disguised Italian, “not always his best self.”

Ouch. That stings.

“What could he possibly have to gain by making up such a fanciful story?” Joe asks.

“I am not saying he's lying, just, perhaps confused. Mistaken.”

“Inebriated?”

“Not as normal. Something is certainly strange here, Yusuf.”

“I know, dear heart. It is unlike anything else we have ever encountered. Jumping backwards in time? Who ever heard of such a thing?” Joe is trying to keep his voice down, but he’s clearly frustrated. Nicky hums his answer.

“What most concerns me is this talk of another one like us,” Nicky says. “I do not like the idea of knowing she needs us and dealing with Copley first.”

“Of course you don't, hayati. You are full of kindness. But this is our Sebastien we are talking about. He would not make these decisions lightly, nor would he willingly lead us into danger, if he had foreknowledge or not.”

Booker's stomach roils. They don’t trust him. They shouldn’t.

They don’t even know what he’s already done. He’s too late, he’s always too late to stop the first betrayal, of walking them into a trap and setting off the domino of events that haunt him and keep him trapped here, re-living the same couple of weeks over and over.

There’s a bitter taste in his mouth, and he hunkers down and stews in it until the bus jerks to a stop and Andy nudges his shoulder.

“Wake up, sleepy head. Wheels up in 10.”

* * *

The helicopter is a piece of junk, but it gives Booker a sense of nostalgia to slide into the pilot's seat and fit the noise-cancelling headset over his ears. He starts flicking switches and running through his procedures. The noisy engine stirs to life. Andy leans over, hooks a finger under the headset and lifts it off one ear.

“We have to do a drug drop over Libya,” she yells over the noise. “I'll throw it out when we hit the coordinates.”

Booker gives a thumbs up and slides on his sunglasses.

So far, so good. When he'd tried to explain in Goussainville that he had been jumping back in time, he had been too drunk and too stressed to make any sense. Luckily, his body on the kill-floor was stone cold sober, which was quite disconcerting to be thrown back into. There's a tentative sort of agreement between the rest of the team, a willingness to go along with this hare-brained scheme. He hopes it pays off. He's determined not to go through this day again.

The other three strap themselves into the seats directly behind him. Booker checks they've all got their headsets in place, and even gives Andy's seatbelt a tug to ensure it's fastened securely. If she notices, she lets it slide. He gets the signal to lift off, and the world falls away.

This, at least, is familiar and soothing. The ground streaks below them until he finds their proper altitude, then it's nothing but the drone of the machine and diligently checking his instruments.

He clicks on his headset microphone.

“Good morning, this is your Captain speaking. Thank you for flying with us today. Please ensure all swords and axes are safely stowed under the seat in front of you.”

He doesn't need to look behind himself to know Joe is grinning, and Nicky is smiling his small smile.

“This chopper handles like it has more miles on it than I do, so we might be in for a bumpy ride. Please keep seatbelts fastened the entire time, and try not to distract me. I’m serious, we don’t have time to pick ourselves out of a wreckage today.” And he really, really doesn’t want to think about what could happen if he crashed. Not when he isn’t sure Andy is still hanging on to her immortality.

Andy keys in her headset and yells into the microphone. Booker startles at the burst of static in his ear. “Joe, Nicky, better get some sleep. I’ll stay awake until the drop.”

They must nod their understanding, because nothing more comes over the intercom. A little while later, Andy unhooks her seatbelt and leans over into the cockpit, sticking her head alongside Booker’s.

He jolts a little, but keeps the craft steady. Booker goes to talk into the microphone but Andy stops him, sticking a thumb over her shoulder. Ah, Joe and Nicky must already be asleep with their headsets on, and these old systems only have the one radio link. Any talking would go directly into their ears too.

He tries to push her out of the way, back into her seat. He even tugs on his seatbelt to make a point, but she’s as stubborn as the horses she prefers.

She throws both hands into his field of vision and uses sign to fingerspell a word.

“ _Changes,_ ” she spells out, overemphasizing the hooked pinkies on the “s”.

Confused, he throws a “ _what?_ ” one handed over his shoulder at her. He tries to keep his eyes on his instruments. These old soviet era machines can be touchy.

She jabs her pointer at him. “ _You said changes._ ” She repeats the “s” again for good measure.

A shudder runs through the helicopter and Booker grips the controls tightly, lowering the altitude and taking some pressure off the engine. He removes one hand from the cyclic-pitch lever between his legs and switches sign alphabets to spell out n-e-w.

She shoves him angrily and the helicopter almost pitches. When Booker rightens it again, she holds up a single finger. “ _That’s only one change_.” She’s saying.

Fuck. He shouldn’t have said ‘changes’. He shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe he won’t, next time. If there is a next time. He really hopes there won’t be a next time.

He keeps his gaze fixed on the horizon. He’s not going to tell her. He can’t. She was so, so broken when they transported the two of them, after she learnt she was mortal again. She was… resigned. Lost.

Only Nile could bring back that fire in her eyes, could bring Andy hope.

Nile, who Booker has abandoned. Fuck. He can’t do anything right.

Andy keeps bothering him, but he doesn’t respond, doesn’t reply. She gets more angry, yelling at him in at least three languages even though he can’t hear her over the helicopter roar. This is a lot better, he should always piss Andy off in a helicopter without a usable radio.

She makes the drop over Libya, and he jostles the seatbelt until she begrudgingly puts it on and settles down to sleep.

* * *

There’s movement behind him, and their voices layer over each other in his headset, all cutting in and out until Andy shoves Booker’s shoulder.

“Tell us about this new one,” she orders.

Ahh, the dreams of Nile's first death are no longer unexpected for him, but it’s still a shock to the others.

“Her name is Nile Freeman. She's a Corporal,” he says. “US Marine. Stationed in Afghanistan, somewhere.”

“Not anymore,” Andy says. “She was on a plane. Over the Black Sea.”

Okay, he doesn't care how long Andy's lived. Planes have only been around about a hundred years, there's no reason for her to be able to recognise a coastline from the air.

“Yeah, she had transfer orders,” he remembers dimly. “She was shipping out. Somewhere in Germany, I think.”

That's new. Nile hasn't left Afghanistan before. But she was just injured, she'll want to move from combat duty. Maybe she’s moving closer so her family can visit.

“Booker,” Joe says, and he can read reams into that tone.

“She’s lost and alone,” Nicky says. “Couldn’t you feel it?”

A surge of bitterness crawls up Booker’s throat.

“I waited 5 years to know what was happening to me,” he says harshly. “She can wait two days.”

Then he unhooks his headphone jack and effectively mutes the rest of them for the rest of the trip.

* * *

Booker takes them directly to Copley’s house in Surrey. They arrive under the cover of darkness, dressed in tac gear. Andy leads them to a vantage point where they can watch him. 

Nicky sets up his sniper rifle and uses the scope to track Copley through the window.

The benefits of these modern style homes with their open concepts. They never could have done this when glass was expensive.

“Make the shot,” Booker says.

Nicky looks at him.

Booker stares back.

“What?” Joe asks.

“What are you waiting for? Take the shot!” Booker says harshly.

“Booker...” Andy starts.

“You don’t know what he did,” Booker says. “He sold us out. He betrayed us, let us get locked up and experimented on. He deserves to die!”

They stare at him, unwilling.

He wrenches the sniper rifle from Nicky’s grip. “I’ll do it myself.”

Booker shoots Copley through the head, and he’s dead before he hits the ground.

“Wait here,” he orders.

He torches the place, all the evidence Copley had collected of their footprints in history, all footage of the kill-floor is destroyed. There are no links back, no way for them to be tracked.

Success.

It’s a clean mission. They don’t even need to get to a safehouse afterwards, an ordinary hotel gives them a room easily. They load up on greasy takeaway and crash out on the two queen beds. Booker and Andy have made a habit of sharing beds throughout the ages. Masquerading as a wedded couple, siblings, a lovelorn suitor, all connections come naturally to them, and this modern obsession with individual beds is, frankly, excessive. They all go to sleep.

* * *

Booker wakes up screaming. Joe and Nicky cling to each other, one of them is sobbing, and Andy is shaking.

“This happen last time?” Andy spits.

Booker puts a hand to his chest. They were cutting her _open_.

“No.” He croaks out.

There were needles, and infusion bags. God above, they drained her dry.

“Did we-” Andy gags and tries again. “What do we know?”

Joe's hands are trembling as he pulls out his sketchbook.

“A doctor. A man, grey hair.” Nicky says. “Korean, I think.”

“I saw a younger woman, a doctor or scientist. She might have been Germanic.” Joe adds. “Fluorescent lights.”

“They weren't just taking samples.” Booker says, eyes wet. “They were pushing her limits.”

God, he needs a drink. He goes to stand up, but Andy locks her legs around his midsection. She pulls and rolls, pinning him to the bed underneath her.

“Where is she?” Andy demands.

“I don't know!” Booker says. He tries to hold up his hands in surrender, but she grips his arms and painfully twists them. “I swear. I swear to God, I don't know.”

“You _said_ she'd be fine. You said you've done this before!” Andy's teeth are bared, every inch the ancient warrior.

“Never like this!” Booker cries. “She's never been captured before.”

“I thought you said we were all captured,” Nicky says quietly.

“She saved us,” he croaks out.

Andy stares down at him, eyes wild. Without breaking her wrestling grip on Booker, she glances up at the other bed.

“Joe?” She asks.

He's got the sketchbook up to his nose. “I don't…” his face is pinched. “I don't have much.”

She looks down at Booker, seething with disdain.

“Yeah, well. We gotta work with what we got.”

* * *

They don't have much to go on. Not that night, nor the night after that, or the night after that. The only dreams they get are of screams and pain and surgical tools. The laboratory they see is closed off, sealed from the outside world and any indication of day or place or even weather. Notes are kept away from Nile, and the only thing they see outside of tests is her sleeping and a tv with what they learn are reruns of American sitcoms.

During the day, Booker lives at his laptop, chasing up every trace and lead he has at his disposal. He learns that Nile was transferred to Landstuhl, Germany, to a US military base, and then her trail runs cold. He has to go the other way, starting broadly, researching every biomedical and pharmaceutical company with US military contracts and searching through every employee, every facility, building a web of information, thick and inscrutable.

He puts tracers on the phones of Nile's family, but they know nothing, having been told to expect silence from her as the nature of her tour changes. They're blissfully unaware of the horrors Nile is going through. Lucky bastards.

After a week they're down to analysing the shoes that the scientists wear.

After two, they just start breaking into research facilities, rolling the dice every time that maybe this one could be where they find her.

One vision they get has Nile making a break for it. She finds a moment where her captors are distracted, and she throws herself at the scientists, clawing at their faces. She gets blood under her nails and beats the older man over the head with a metal tray.

Nile stumbles out into the hall, her body weak from healing again and again without respite. She doesn't get far, just enough for them to recognise some markers that indicate she's still in the EU, before she's shot down and wakes up strapped to the bed again.

They wake in silence that morning, and Booker crosses some facilities off his list.

It just keeps going. Every day is a new failure.

Nicky withdraws into himself. Andy is full of rage like Booker has never seen before. And Joe, his dearest friend Joe, looks heartbroken, and a shell of the man he should be.

Another morning, another dream of drowning mixed with feeling Nile's confusion and terror. Will he get used to it, Booker wonders, will it become just another vision alongside his recurring nightmares of Quynh? Booker takes himself up to the attic of the house they've found, somewhere they won't come looking for him, and buries his face in his hands.

It's all wrong. He fucked up again.

Next time he'll do better. Will he even get another chance? Does he deserve it?

A bloodless death, then. Something easy to clean up. One that he can hide from the others if it doesn't work, if he can't jump back in time and he's stuck here, with the consequences of his actions. A fate worse than death.

He takes his leather belt in hand and fashions it into a familiar loop over the rafters. Wary that he might not jump back in time again, he keeps his knife in his pocket, just in case he needs to cut himself down, as he climbs onto the stool.

He pushes his head through the loop and kicks away the stool, accepting a death that is so much like his first.

* * *

Booker wakes up on the kill-floor in South Sudan. Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh dear, Booker! But he's starting to get an idea of the rules of this Time Loop!  
> Thanks so much for reading, please leave a comment below! Thanks again to [Aqua](https://sal-si-puedes.tumblr.com/) for beta reading!


	4. Chapter 4

It feels really, really good to rip the soldiers apart on the kill-floor this time. Booker is full of anger, at himself, at Copley and Merrick, and he conveniently has a room full of people who need killing.

It might just be that he's killed these same men before, but he feels like he's getting better at it. He doesn't catch any more bullets to the shoulder this time.

He doesn't say anything about jumping back in time. He stays mostly silent, just feeding his old lines back as they clean up the kill-floor and make for the train.

“I wonder what equipment they used to cook the chicken pastilla,” Nicky muses. “It can be difficult to keep it so tender.”

“We were going to take you there after our mission, Booker.” Joe says. “French-Moroccoan fusion. You must try it sometime. I love this trend of fusion restaurants.”

Booker turns away so they can't see him roll his eyes. “Was there music?”

“There was!” Joe is delighted. “Live music! A young woman played the guitar and sang, she was very good.”

And he sighs and stares dreamily at Nicky. Really, it’s a little too easy to make Joe happy.

“Come on,” Booker says, picking up his pace. “We have to make the train.”

“The train?” Andy asks. “I didn’t know there was a trainline through here.”

“Yeah, I, uh-” Booker casts about. “I saw it on the maps. You know, research.”

“Research,” Andy repeats dryly.

“Yeah.” Booker nods, lying through his teeth. “Research.”

_Two shots, quick kill. Fear and horror. A long blade slicing through her neck. What's going to happen to her Mom-_

They all startle awake. Booker's hand is on his throat where he cut off his own air only a few hours ago.

“What the…” Andy whispers, gripping her hair in her hands. “No. No, not another one. Not now.”

“It was a woman. A black woman.”

“I saw an older woman in a hijab.”

Booker pauses with his flask halfway to his lips.

“I saw a name tag. Freeman. Corporal.”

“Dirt floor, clay walls.”

“And a medevac.”

“Marine, right?” Booker says, gesturing at Andy with his free hand. After weeks of dreaming of Nile's torture, having seen this first death again was almost comforting in its familiarity. He doesn't even want to know how many times he's drunk this same damn lukewarm whiskey.

Joe and Nicky look over at her, like they're recognising her silence for the first time, and they wait.

“Yeah, she's a Marine. Combat duty, or near enough.” Andy says. “Afghanistan.”

Booker stands up and grabs his pack.

“What are you doing?” Andy asks.

“Going to Afghanistan. Obviously.” Booker says.

The others stare at him, still reeling. Come on, guys, places to be.

“No,” Andy says.

“No?” Booker asks. “What do you mean, no?”

“No, damnit!” Andy yells. “We're not doing this, guys! Not right now, not with what Copley has on us!”

This is different, even though Booker hasn't changed much at all this time around. God, Andy must have been hanging on by a thread.

“What about her?” Joe jumps in. “We just leave her out in the open?”

“We’re in the open,” Andy shoots back. “And if we’re exposed, she is too. There's no use dragging her into this. She can sit. We have other things to worry about right now. We have to shut down Copley before he can use what he has on us. We act like this new one never happened.”

Booker's heart sticks in his throat, panicking that he's going to fail Nile once more.

It surprises Booker that Andy is pushing back. He always played the cynic, Nicky the heart and Joe the dreamer. Andy always came through as the pragmatic leader. But now, when he changes his tune, Andy is spitting bitterness and despair that is so familiar to his own mind.

Oh shit, has he been a bad influence on the most incredible person the world has ever seen?

“Everything happens for a reason, Boss.” It's Nicky's softest voice. “If a thousand years hasn't taught me that, then I've learned nothing.”

Booker leans back against the pallets and speaks quietly, eyes downcast. “The world moves faster now. We were all able to hide our first deaths. Pass them off as a miracle.” He looks up at them, one after the other. “As an act of God,” he shrugs and scoffs at himself. “Dumb luck. She doesn’t have that luxury. She needs us.”

Andy is looking at him strangely, and Booker will admit that he doesn’t always come across as the most sensitive of the team. But he just finished carrying the weight of all of Nile's fear and pain and confusion, and he’s the only one here who even remembers it.

Andy stands up. “I’ll handle the retrieval.”

“I'm coming with you,” Booker says.

“No, you're not. You need to find Copley.”

“I already did!” Booker blurts out. They stare at him in confusion. “I do my fucking research, guys. In case things went FUBAR. I have his address.”

Joe sits up, his finger lax as it holds his pencil, sketch half-formed. “Then we’ll come, too.”

“No.” Andy clenches her fist as she considers. “A team of two is faster, easier to hide. Get to the Charlie safehouse. We'll need supplies.”

“No, no, try the Echo house.” Goussainville had been too easily overrun before. The house in London is at least an unknown. “It’s closer.”

Nicky nods his assent as Joe finishes his sketch. He blows on the page, then rips it out and hands it to Andy.

Booker looks away. He's seen Nile's face in death too many times already.

* * *

They're about two hours outside of Herat, and they're both chasing up contacts and leads in the area. The older contacts, ones they knew back in the Indo-Pakistani War in the 70's and in various conflicts during the Soviet Union, they swap and pretend to be each other's adult children. _Why yes, it's very sad my mother Andrea passed away, but I must continue the family business. My dear father Seb drank himself into a ditch a few decades ago (not untrue), I could use a ride out of Afghanistan._

They buy a stolen Jeep, with tags and plates that should let them get into the base. It comes with one uniform that fits Booker alright. Andy drives, Andy always drives, and Booker, ever the forger, sets his laptop on his knees as they bounce along dusty roads, and sets up his false identity to get them through the gates.

He's going to get to Nile. First priority. Even if he wakes up on the kill-floor in South Sudan a hundred more times, he won't abandon her again.

Andy looks at him, his hands flexing against the keyboard, the agitated way he keeps looking out the window, and she huffs a small laugh.

Booker looks up at her, daring her to comment.

“Sometimes I forget,” she says.

“What?”

“How young you are,” Andy says. “You've never had to meet a new one before.”

He's already met Nile twice.

He grunts in response.

“It’s unsettling, isn’t it?” Andy continues. “We don’t get a choice, don’t know what they’ll be like. We don’t even know if they’ll be a good fit.” She’s inscrutable behind her sunglasses, staring at the horizon.

“Was I?”

“What?”

“A good fit?”

She smirks at him, then reaches over and ruffles his hair. “Jury's still out on that one.”

* * *

It's not the first time they've broken into a US Military base, and it won't be the last. Booker tucks his non-regulation hair under a cap and takes over driving the last mile, and Andy folds her body under the seats so she won’t be seen. Booker gets them through the gate under the guise of the truck needing repairs. They sneak through the base, blending in perfectly in plain sight, past the mess hall to the exercise area, where they spot a young woman, furiously doing sit ups. She jumps to attention when her superior officer approaches and speaks to her.

“That her?” Andy asks, holding up Joe's sketch. Booker pretends to glance at it.

“That's her.”

They tail her, in and out of the barracks, until she finds a quiet place to lean against the shipping container, cap on her head, music in her ears.

Nike stands up, alert and wary, when two other officers approach.

“Andy, what's the plan?” Booker whispers. He turns his head but she's not there any more.

Andy coldcocks one of the soldiers with her elbow, then loops an arm around the neck of the other, spins and smashes his face into a container.

Nile's quick too, she grabs a pistol from the fallen soldiers and tries to hold it to Andy, but two quick movements and it's in Andy's hands.

It's been five seconds since Booker asked about the plan, and two soldiers are unconscious and Nile is being held at gunpoint.

Typical.

But still… Nile is alive. She's scared and bewildered, but not tortured, not captured.

“Who are you?” Nile asks, eyes darting to Booker as he steps around the corner into view.

“Andromache the Scythian.” Andy says.

She slams the pistol into the side of Nile's head. “But you can call me Andy.”

Booker sighs. He's trying to get to Nile to stop her from being traumatised, did Andy really have to pistol whip her?

“You like her more than me,” Booker says dryly.

“What?”

“The first time we met, you shot me in the head.”

Andy bends down to drag the other soldiers behind a crate and grins up at him. “There's still time.”

* * *

They take the truck back, new brake pads replacing the ones Booker had damaged before they got to the base. When they're out of sight from the base, Andy pulls herself out of her hiding spot and rolls Nile into the back of the truck. Booker vacates the driver's seat for her and settles into the passenger side. The military uniform jacket he loses, content with the dark green shirt underneath.

“Pass me the baklava, would you?” Andy says. Booker reaches into the bag behind the front seat and places the pastry, unwrapped, on the dashboard.

“Toasting a successful extraction?” He asks dryly.

She grins at him from behind her sunglasses.

As they drive along into the desert, Booker keeps looking behind them, at the way Nile's still unconscious body flops around in the best of the truck.

Should it be like this? Isn't there a better way to introduce Nile to her new life? He considers bundling up his jacket to place it under her head.

“Would you relax?” Andy groans. “She's one of us. You saw it.”

“I know, I'm just,” he glances back again, and Nile is kicking open the back of the truck and rolling out onto the ground.

“Shit!” Booker calls.

“I see it,” Andy says. She pulls the truck to a stop, and they throw open their doors.

Nile is already on her feet and running away. Where the hell does she think she's going to go?

“Hey! It's okay!” Booker calls out, chasing after her. “Slow down!”

But Andy pulls a gun from her pants and fires it, right through Nile’s head.

Booker turns to her. “Andy!” He roars.

“What?” She asks, nonplussed. “Now you know I don't play favourites.”

He’s furious at her, at her carelessness, not just for Nile's life, but for how callous she is, that she's not even thinking about how scared Nile must be. He tries not to reflect too hard on why he’s taking it so personally. He knows Nicky would have some insights about _projecting_ and _self-loathing_.

Booker rushes over to Nile, watching her carefully. Andy takes her sweet time, tucking her pistol back into her waistband as she wanders over to them.

“It’s always slow,” Andy says. “The first few times.”

Booker can’t slow down his heart. What if it doesn't stick? What if he failed her again? But she's breathing, and oh, thank God, she's rolling over, she's awake.

“You shot me,” Nile breathes.

“I did,” Andy says. “We need you to get back in the car.” At Booker's glare, she tacks on, “please.”

“No, this isn’t real. None of this is real.”

“It's okay,” Booker says, keeping his hands visible, non-threatening, trying to keep the peace. Both women have other ideas.

“You haven't figured this out yet?” Andy accuses, dragging Nile to her feet. “You can't die! Get up.”

A knife, from who knows where. Nile stabs a knife into Andy's chest, and Booker sees red.

Without even thinking, he's flipped her, grappling with Nile until she's pinned under him. Nile is not unfamiliar with hand to hand combat, but Booker has been practicing Jiu-Jitsu since before her grandparents were born, she doesn't get far. Still, she pushes back, getting an arm free and jabbing him in the gut. Blood is rushing in his ears as he bends her arm back.

He can't look behind, convinced he'd see Andy in the dust, bleeding out and dead forever.

“Hey!” Andy's voice is sharp. He turns his head and it meets Andy's fist.

His vision bursts into stars. Dazed, his grip on Nile slackens, and she breaks free. Andy twists his arm and slams him into the ground, giving Nile a chance to shuffle away, frantic.

“What the hell, Booker?” Andy demands. “I thought you wanted to smooth things over.”

Booker stumbles to his feet, tending to his bleeding nose.

“What the hell is this shit?” Nile demands, her fists up and ready to keep fighting.

Andy's clearly still strong and wouldn’t back down from going another round, but she’s slaughtered her way through Merrick's men with a bullet wound in her gut before. Booker needs more proof she's alright.

He hooks a finger under the strap of Andy's tank top and pulls it to the side. No open knife wound, it's already healed up. She still has her immortality.

If anyone else but Booker tried that move on Andy, they wouldn't have a chance to draw their next breath, but as it's him, he sighs in relief.

“What-” Nile sees the healed over skin, and her eyes trade to the bloodied knife thrown into the sand. Her eyes boggle. “Who are you?”

“I'm Andromache. Call me Andy,” Andy replies.

“And what is he? Your attack dog?” Nile jerks her chin at Booker.

“I'm sorry,” he says. His voice croaks too much.

_I'm sorry for tackling you, I'm sorry for abandoning you. I'm sorry you won't get to see your family again. I'm sorry you're stuck with this immortality business, I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I would have stopped it from happening to you if I could._

Nile stares at him, clearly confused and concerned. Even Andy is giving him a weird look.

Well, that was embarrassing.

Maybe even too embarrassing. Booker gets the familiar urge to crawl into a hole and forget it ever happened.

Unless…

“Excuse me a moment,” Booker says as he steps away. He pulls his pistol from his belt and tucks it under his chin.

* * *

As they drive along into the desert from the military base, Booker keeps looking behind them, at the way Nile's still unconscious body flops around in the best of the truck.

“Would you relax?” Andy groans, plucking another piece of baklava from the packet. “She's one of us. You saw it.”

Many times now. More times than he'd like.

“I just think we're about to have a runner,” Booker says.

“I'd be worried if she didn't at least try.”

He had remembered, this cycle, while they walked from the kill-floor to the train and he heard again about Joe and Nicky's romantic dinner out, that Andy had talked a little about retrieving Nile. It was weeks ago, it was this evening. Once, there was a hijacking mentioned, a stabbing, getting shot in the head and maybe even a broken arm. He feels foolish for having forgotten, for letting his fear get the best of him. Andy will survive anything Nile will throw at her until they get to Joe and Nicky.

There's the twin thumps of the back of the truck opening, and Nile hitting the dirt and rolling.

“Here we go,” Booker says. As Andy brakes, he grips the dashboard and grits his teeth. “Would you please try to be respectful this time? Not everything can be solved by shooting it in the head,” he says.

“What do you mean, this time?” Andy asks.

“Oh, you know,” Booker says, stalling.

That's right. He didn't talk with this version of Andy about the first time they met. He jumps out of the truck, watching Nile run. “When you found me for the first time, you killed me.”

They're standing shoulder to shoulder in the middle of the desert. Ahead of them, Nile stumbles and regains her balance, desperate to make it over the distant ridge.

“It got you on board, didn't it?” Andy smirks, casually pulling her gun from her waistband.

Booker makes a noncommittal sound which draws a small smile from her.

Nile has made it a good distance away this time, but Andy is the best of them. She raises the pistol, and just before Nile gets to safety over the ridge, her kneecap shatters.

Nile screams out, collapsing to the ground.

Really, is that much better? Booker lets his frustration show and walks up alongside Nile.

“Stay back!” Nile spits through the pain.

Booker crouches down beside her, angling to get a look at her destroyed knee knitting back together. “Hey, hey, let me see.”

With one smooth motion, Nile rises up and slices his throat.

The knife. He forgot to take away her knife.

No, no, no. Booker grips his neck, holding the blood in, willing himself to not die and lose this cycle again. It would be such a pain to relive it all again so soon.

Andy doesn't rush to help him, she doesn't know that he'll reset if he dies. It's business as usual for her. If anything she'll just be laughing at him, and proud of Nile.

His vision goes grey at the edges as blood spills over his shirt, but under his fingers, the skin of his throat is already knitting itself back together. He made it. He didn't die, he stayed in this cycle.

 _Keep the jacket on next time,_ he thinks hysterically, _it would be better to lose it to the blood._ He doesn't have a spare shirt and this one is going to be sticky and gross.

His throat is almost healed up from where Nile sliced it, and Booker turns to the side and heaves up all the blood that drained into his lungs and stomach.

Nile turns the other way and just vomits.

“What a pair you two make,” Andy says dryly, folding her arms across her chest.

They both look up at her, then at each other, vomit clinging to both of their lips, blood drenching Booker's chest.

Nile's eyes widen again. “You-” she starts, a shaky finger pointed at Booker. She's terrified, poor thing. “What are you?”

Booker tries to speak, but all that comes out through the closing hole in his throat in a sad little whistle. His larynx isn't fixed up yet.

“I'm Andromache. Call me Andy. This is Booker,” Andy says on his behalf.

He gives a little grin that, at her reaction, must mean his teeth are still covered in blood.

“You're immortal, like us,” Andy says. “You can't die. Neither can he. Neither can i.”

She lifts the pistol again and shoots it clean through her own bicep. Nile balks, but the blood and gore falls away as she heals.

Booker stands, his own throat healed up faster than Nile's kneecap, and he offers her a hand. She refuses it and hobbles to her feet.

“What do you want with me?” Nile demands.

“I lead a group of immortals. An army, I guess,” Andy says. “Soldiers. Fighters like you.”

“We want to protect you,” Booker says, his voice rough. “People like us, we have to stick together.” That gets a strange look from Andy that he can't quite read.

A dribble of vomit is still clinging to Nile's bottom lip. Booker strips of his blood soaked army shirt and bundles it so the clean back of it is usable and offers it to her. She is clearly repulsed by the idea, so he shrugs and uses the clean part to wipe down himself and then drop it to the dirt.

“You've got questions, kid,” Andy says. “The only way you'll get them is to come with us. Get back in the car,” she orders and turns on her heel. It's not entirely clear which one of them she's talking to, but Booker has been following her lead for centuries. He's halfway to the car before he thinks to turn around and check on Nile.

She's still standing there, surrounded by desert. Booker tries to give her a smile and jerks his head at the truck. _Come on_ , he tries to communicate, then he leaves her to make the choice.

* * *

The safe house in London is a single bedroom flat in a run down tenement building covered with graffiti and littered with debris. Booker almost doesn't see it for what it is any more. A beautiful place is just as useful as a disgusting one. Both will serve their purpose and fall into disrepair and surrender to time. Unlike him.

It's only when Nile makes a small, disgusted sound at a patch of concrete by the door, stained a nonspecific, and not encouraging, brown and two broken needles that have been there for quite some time, does Booker see the safe house with new eyes.

“It's, uh, not our best place,” he admits.

It doesn't do much to reassure her.

The plane ride was… not as interesting as it could have been, apparently. No hijacking occurred. Booker didn't trust his own brain enough to close his eyes and surrender to sleep. Not even seeing Nile healthy and alive and free across from him has been a comfort, after the weeks of nightmares and having seen her tortured.

Joe and Nicky welcome them into the dingy flat, as best they can.

The usual evidence of squatters in their safehouses has been hidden away, replaced with a couple of crates pulled up to act as chairs around a beaten up coffee table. In the centre of the low table is a clear plastic cup, from some fast food chain Booker doesn't recognise, but it's holding some flowers that are probably weeds, freshly plucked by Joe, likely, from the abandoned lot next door.

Always trying to make the best of things, Joe is. Honestly, his eternal positivity is sickening.

The flat smells a bit musty, so Booker gravitates towards Nicky in the kitchen and the better smells there.

He looks down at the dish Nicky is stirring carefully, the same strips of bell peppers and a tray of potatoes that he served up the other times in Goussainville.

“Peperonata,” he says dumbly. “Huh.”

“What?” Nicky asks.

“Nothing, I just thought, you know, different country, different food-,” he breaks off because Nicky is just staring at him. “Nevermind.”

Booker is hungry and serves himself up a plate immediately. Now that he thinks about it, he hasn't eaten for two cycles. He was hunting down the lab that captured Nile, then he lived through two quick cycles without a solid meal. His body isn't as hungry as it should be considering he doesn't remember eating for over 24 perceived hours. He also hasn't slept for more than that, but he's not feeling the way he usually does after an all nighter. Interesting.

Nile looks very awkward and stifled in the small flat, she doesn't know where to stand, and Booker remembers a time when apartments this size were the norm for multiple families crammed into one room.

Booker digs into his meal without even stopping to sit.

“Nile, would you like some dinner?” Nicky asks politely.

Booker stops with a strip of tender bell pepper hanging out of his mouth. He tries very hard to finish slurping it up silently.

“I think I need some air,” Nile says and almost bolts for the door.

Andy sighs and assigns herself the job of chasing after her.

Booker knows he looks like a slob and a weirdo, but he doesn't care. If this loop restarts soon he has yet another chance for a first impression anyway. And he loves Nicky's peperonata.

Booker stays by the kitchen with his bowl in hand, chowing down as fast as he can.

Joe's expression twists as he stares out the door. “Well, that could have gone better.” He places a hand on Nicky's back and Nicky tilts his head into Joe's shoulder.

“Could have gone worse,” Booker says from a place of authority.

The food is a welcome reprieve, but Booker needs to act soon. The Echo safehouse is an unknown in these cycles, but an attack is coming, sooner or later.

He walks over to the window and wipes away a few layers of grime, peering out into the dim street below.

There's a _fwwwp_ , the glass window shatters, and there's a sharp pain in his chest.

He stares down at himself, more than a little confused. Something long and thin is sticking out from his chest. This has never happened before.

Two more _fwwwps_ and two more things are stuck into his chest.

“Wha-”

The bowl falls from his hands, and Nicky's thrice cooked peperonata crashes to the floor.

Joe connects the dots quickly. “Tranq! Tranq!” Joe yells, hitting the ground and dragging Nicky down with him.

Oh. They used tranquilizers here, not gas. Booker's head gets fuzzy, and heavy. Oh, shit.

Soldiers burst through the door, noise erupting in a firefight, shooting even as Booker's balance goes out the window and he stumbles against the bench.

They're early. The soldiers didn't even let him finish his dinner this time, very rude. Booker falls to the ground, the tranquilizers fucking up his systems, and his vision fades to black.

They didn't even have the decency to kill him and let him start the cycle over.

* * *

Booker wakes up with a grunt and a groan. His face is pressed against the cool ground, but this time, it's not concrete.

It's metal, and it’s rocking slowly.

He's not on the kill-floor. He's in... some sort of transport.

He sits up and pitches forward slightly, his hands are bound behind his back and he's still shaking off the tranq, so his balance is messed up. He flexes his wrists.

Zip ties. An armoured van, packed full of soldiers on the benches around them. Joe and Nicky unconscious on the floor in front of him. God, he hopes they're just unconscious.

“Ah, fuck,” he groans. The soldiers eye him carefully as he finds his balance. He scrambles to his knees and ducks his head close to Joe's, then Nicky's, testing them, muttering in their ears to wake up, to wake up now.

Joe is the most responsive. He must have gone down after Booker, or maybe Nicky was hit with a harder dose. His head lolls towards Booker's voice in his ear.

“Come on, Joe,” Booker mutters, nudging his nose against Joe's cheek. One of the soldiers makes a disgusted sound at the casual touch. “I need you.”

That gets through to him. Joe stirs, eyes blinking groggily as he makes his way back to the waking world.

“Seb,” his voice is cracked and breathless. It cuts the string of tension, and Booker collapses onto Joe's chest in relief. Another scoff from a soldier.

Joe uses Booker as leverage to sit up, eyes blinking and rolling as he orientates.

“Armoured van,” Booker supplies, “taking us to Copley and his employer.”

Joe's eyes track down to Nicky's prone form, collapsed on the ground.

“He’s breathing,” Booker says, “I checked.”

That doesn't do much to reassure Joe. He won't be content until Nicky speaks to him, calms him down himself.

Joe got the easier deal. Unlike Booker, his hands are bound in front of him. He can reach out and touch Nicky's shoulder, try and grip him to roll him over, calling his name-

“Hey!” A particularly boorish soldier barks at him “No touching!”

Joe rolls his eyes. “What are you going to do, kill me?”

He reaches out again, gently cradling Nicky's face.

“I said, don't touch him!” The soldier orders again. His mouth twists into a sneer and he jerks his head at Booker. “You'll make your boyfriend jealous.”

Several jeers come out of the other soldiers. Joe drops his hands, and his face goes calm.

Uh-oh. That's the business face.

“How young you are,” Joe starts, and Booker’s shoulders slump, resigned. They’re in for a long one. “How pathetic. To think that every display of care and devotion between men must be sexual, and worse, that it is degrading. Is it loneliness that makes you scoff this way? I pity you. Have you never had a brother in arms stand beside you, battle after battle and feel the loyalty of ages as I do for Booker here? I would go to the end of the world for him as he would for me.”

Joe’s eyes are shining with honesty and purity, and it makes Booker sick.

Oh, he really doesn't want to admit he betrayed them all this cycle.

The soldiers are too focused on Joe's words, they don't see what Booker sees. They don't see Nicky's eyes fluttering or the way he stays down as he regains consciousness, and how his fingers shift and touch Joe's ankle to show he's awake.

“We have fought together for centuries,” Joe continues, “and the loyalty we have for each other still stirs my heart. To feel safe at the touch of another man, to protect and be protected by a brother in arms and in life, it is a joy you will never learn, because you will never have what he and I have earned through blood and battle and fire.”

Booker just might faint from embarrassment if Joe keeps on like this.

“Why don't we show them what we've learnt?” he asks.

Together, all three of them explode into movement. Joe grabs the legs of one of the soldiers and drags him to the ground and starts bashing his head. Nicky kicks out, using his thighs to pin down another soldier and then steals his gun. Booker doesn't have his hands available, but he's not called thickheaded for nothing. A well placed headbutt and a shove with his foot, and two soldiers are toppling over, right into the path for Joe, who has stolen a pistol from a holster, to shoot them in the chest.

Within a minute, all of the soldiers are dead, and Booker slumps onto the bench.

Okay. Okay, he can save this cycle.

A radio strapped to the body of the soldier at his feet crackles to life.

 _“We have the other two,”_ a voice says.

The three men stare at the radio.

 _“Two?”_ A different voice asks. It's James Copley.

Joe looks at Nicky. Nicky looks at Booker. Booker keeps his eyes downcast.

“ _Two women,_ ” comes the response. “ _One live, one in a body bag._ ”

Oh, God, no.

A chill runs through the van.

Joe makes a choked sound. Nicky is all business.

“Are you sure Nile is one of us?” He asks Booker. “Did you see her heal?”

“Yeah,” Booker croaks out. “The one in the body bag is Andy.”

Mercifully, they don't ask him how he knows this. Joe and Nicky look at each other, then they reach out and clasp their hands together. In their 900 years of existence, their only consistencies have been each other, and Andy. They can't fathom it, that there could ever be an end to Andromache the Scythian.

Booker eyes the gun in Joe's hands.

“Shoot me,” he demands.

“What?”

“Shoot me!” He says, desperate. “If I'm dead I'll reset, I can try again, I can save her. Shoot me!"

“What are you talking about, Booker?” Nicky asks.

There's no time to explain. The van rocks to a stop. He'll die, he'll reset and wake up back on the kill-floor. But he doesn't have time to say it.

“If you trust me at all, you’ll kill me right now, Joe. I can fix it!”

Behind him, the doors at the back of the van rattle.

Booker lunges at him. “Now!”

Joe obeys. He fires three times into Booker’s heart, and another bullet grazes his throat as he goes down.

Booker falls backwards, collapsing on top of the bodies of the soldiers, head bent back at an awkward angle to see the doors upside down. His vision starts to fade as the door swings open, but he sees a lot of guns pointed at them in the dark, and Copley is standing behind them.

The big guy, the one Joe killed on the first go around, he steps forward and sneers.

“Looks like they found the mole in the ranks,” the big one says. Joe fires one last bullet into Booker’s skull, and the world goes blank.

* * *

He gets ready to get up, get his feet under himself and run, two guards straight ahead, just like he’s practiced many times before, but-

He’s face up. That’s weird. Has he finally broken the cycle? Is this the cursed reality he ended up in?

He’s face up, and he’s being dragged to his feet. He can hear voices, Joe and Nicky’s among them. His vision slowly blinks into focus.

“Booker, what-?” It’s Joe’s voice, and it’s so broken.

Booker is being held up between two soldiers, with blood on his shirt from where Joe shot him. His feet are chained, he’s staring at Copley, and a glob of blood is itching the inside of his ear.

It didn’t work.

The loop didn’t start again. Why didn’t it start again?

He was definitely dead, right? Booker knows dead. He’s been dead pretty often, he knows the difference between dead and unconscious.

Nicky’s voice, soft and hurt, cuts through the rush in his ears. “Booker, what is he talking about?”

Booker looks at Copley, but he gives nothing away. It’s the first time he’s spoken to Copley since he put a bullet in Andy in his house. “This wasn’t the deal,” he spits. “None of this was supposed to happen!”

“I know,” Copley says, voice as smooth as silk. “The situation changed.”

Fucking security experts. Always hedging, never committing to a version of events because they never want to be wrong. Never admitting culpability.

Joe shakes his head at Booker, face anguished. “This isn't you,” he says. “Tell me you didn't do this.”

But it is him, that's the worst part. It is who he is, and he did betray them. It's the one damn thing about him that he can't change, that he's a traitor. That he deserves every broken look and shouted insult.

He can't look at Joe, or Nicky. Can't even summon the words to confess or apologize.

He has bigger things to occupy his mind.

He has to initiate a time jump. Somehow, Joe shooting him didn't work. He doesn't know why.

Last jump, it was his own pistol under his chin in the Afghanistan desert, the time before that was putting his head through a belt loop, and before that he ate lead. But before that-

Does it only reset in ways he's already died before? He's sure Joe has shot him, at least once in his long life, surely.

They're frog-marched from the basement carpark up to the elevator, which takes them straight into the laboratories. The three of them are held at gunpoint the whole way, Booker's hands still bound behind him, severely limiting his options, but he watches for his opening.

“The boss will be here soon,” The big one says.

Booker's zip tie cuffs are cut, and he pitches backwards and headbutts the soldier under the chin.

The big one yells and draws his gun, firing twice into Booker's chest. He still has a few moments in him. More, if he can avoid a lethal shot until he can- there it is.

Booker gets his hands on the collapsed soldier's pistol.

Booker catches three more bullets, his muscles getting ripped apart, but in his last few seconds, he gets the barrel into his mouth and he pulls the trigger.

* * *

Booker is almost getting fond of the "pling" sound that he hears when the bullet pops from his cheek and onto the kill-floor in South Sudan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to [Aqua](sal-si-puedes.tumblr.com) for beta reading! Please do leave a review! We're really in the thick of Groundhog Day now, so let me know if you have any suggestions or things you want to see!


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